ASL Safety & Security Control System Streamlines UK Transportation

ASL Safety & Security has delivered its 3-D control and supervisory platform at City Thameslink train station in London as part of the Thameslink programme.

The system is a sensor and event fusion environment in which voice, data and video can be filtered, analyzed and directed from the full range of subsystems used at transport hubs. At City Thameslink, the solution is monitoring public address and voice alarm (PA/VA), surveillance, help points, alarm reporting and voice recorders.

The PA/VA systems employ ASL's own IP audio controller, a hardware platform developed in conjunction with the VIPA software suite that provides a VoIP and digital voice announcement solution for railway stations and airports.

It is aimed at mission-critical facilities that require lifelike representation of events within an integrated control environment across many disciplines and subsystems. Use of a distributed and open standards-based ‘publish and subscribe' model for messaging ensures efficient use of bandwidth compared with rival ‘hub and spoke' architecture control room software.

The installation at City Thameslink is in a three-part infrastructure project that ASL is providing for the rail division of engineering design consultancy Atkins who in turn are working for Network Rail. The Thameslink programme will deliver longer, more frequent trains across London.

In a second stage, ASL will supply its subsystem supervisory software and VoIP hardware at Blackfriars Station, a site that poses logistical challenges for all contractors since it lies on both sides of the River Thames. The final phase of the project will be Farringdon Station to the north of the city's financial quarter. All three stations will have their own operational centers employing the system control solution.

ASL Safety & Security won the contract in open tender based on the functionality of iVENCS shown in successful deployment at a major international airport and at St. Pancras International Station - currently Europe's busiest rail hub – where the software controls over 8,500 field devices across 16 subsystems.